The Last Chance Dog: and Other True Stories of Holistic Animal Healing - Softcover

Kelleher, Donna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743223020 ISBN 13: 9780743223027

Publisher: Scribner, 2004

Synopsis

Yogi, a scrappy Jack Russell terrier, has a pain in the neck and hasn't walked for weeks.
Nikita is a fifteen-year-old seal point Himalayan cat who has lost all interest in eating.
And then there's Angel, a curious cockatoo whose bacterial infections defy every antibiotic known to science.
Meet just a few of the remarkable, real-life characters in The Last Chance Dog, a collection of heartwarming, entertaining, and instructive tales as told by Donna Kelleher, one of the country's most esteemed holistic veterinarians. Here she recounts a series of complex and compelling cases, taking us through the intuitive art of diagnosing animals and curing them with safe, natural remedies -- such as acupuncture, herbal treatments, and chiropractic adjustments -- when conventional veterinary medicine has failed. In The Last Chance Dog, Kelleher offers advice on everything from vaccinations and pet-food shopping to affordable, easy-to-administer treatments for allergies, digestive problems, urinary tract infections, pain, hot spots, itchy skin, fear, and anxiety. Inspirational and nothing short of miraculous, the stories of ailing and recovering animals -- and the people who love them -- are as unforgettable as they are true.

About this title

About the Author

Donna Kelleher, D.V.M., a graduate of Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine, is certified by the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society, the American Veterinary Chiropractic Association, and the Veterinarian Botanical Medical Association. The president of the Washington Chapter of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association, she has a holistic practice in Seattle, where she lives with her dogs, Smudge and Sugar, her horse, Charlie, her tortoise, Igor, and her husband -- and fellow veterinarian -- Jeff Blake. Visit her website at www.wholepetvet.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One: Goodbye Animal ER

Emergency medicine always caused a rush of emotions. Once, I remember, a golden retriever came in with a foot-long laceration spanning the width of his chest. I spent three hours stitching him back together. His owners called me two weeks later to say he was as good as new. I loved every time a tiny, comatose kitten popped back to his feet after I gave him a few drops of sugar solution and warmed him up. Usually, after I treated those kittens for parasites, dehydration, and anorexia, they miraculously recuperated. But over time, I began to worry about each animal who was not improving. Eventually, this worry dragged down my healing energies like weights around my ankles.

Early one warm June evening, I'd found it difficult to come in to work for the whole night when the sun told me it was still afternoon. I had just walked into the clinic when Tanya, the technician, greeted me with one of those "Oh no, this is going to be bad" looks. There was an old black lab in exam room one, and as I entered the white sterile room, a strange, loud, odd symphony of chewing struck me. With a twist of the stomach, I realized that it sounded like a movie theater audience stuffing their faces with popcorn.

I looked at the patient. She was lying on her side in the bottom of a plastic travel crate and was unable to get up or even raise her head. She was thin, dehydrated, and sad, and I felt sure the spirit world had forgotten to send for her. I was so shocked to see her in such miserable condition that I forgot momentarily about investigating the origin of the chewing sound.

The dog's owner was an older, seemingly well-off woman with a thick gold bracelet, and a matching necklace below her freshly bobbed hair. "Why did you wait so long to bring her in?" I snapped. I knew it was good, at least, that she had come in, but it was hard to stay composed. My hands began to shake.

She shrugged and sighed. "My son was supposed to be caring for her while we were in Europe." Her words were awkward and abrupt, leaving me to wonder later whether she was more traumatized than her cool demeanor suggested.

I absentmindedly ran my hand along the dog's back while I listened to the woman's excuses. Suddenly, a large clump of what had been skin fell into my hand, revealing the source of those haunting chewing sounds. Thousands of maggots were making the poor paralyzed dog's back their home. These fly larvae set up shop on immobile animals that sit in their own excrement; they had burrowed deeply into both of the dog's hind legs and even into her abdominal cavity. They swirled and wriggled at the disturbance.

Startled, I stepped back for a second. "I'm sorry," I said, filled with sympathy for this forlorn creature but wanting to strangle the woman. "At this point, there is little we can do for her except euthanize her." I could hardly believe I was saying those words, but they came to me quickly, without hesitation.

Outwardly, she did not seem upset. She shed no tears, and her eyes were cool and focused. "I knew you'd say that," she replied sharply. She looked down at the floor. "Where do I pay?" she said abruptly. The woman left, without turning to say goodbye to her dog. Perhaps she was too embarrassed, or hardened. I wondered if I saw tears confined to the corners of her eyes in the final instant when we made unavoidable eye contact. She might have been wondering how her own son could treat another living being this way.

Tanya and I returned to the plastic crate and the dog nestled within it. She looked through me with a miserable gaze, unable to move. I knew she could read my intent as I kneeled to give her a sedative injection. I felt she knew I was going to end her suffering. Animals may not dwell on death as people do, but they do know pain. I felt the transfer of her pain into me in the form of nausea as I injected the thick pink euthanasia solution into a vein on her front leg. As I euthanized her, I thought I felt her spirit lick my cheek as she bounded into her next life. A little while later, since they had also ingested the deadly solution, the maggots finally ceased their terrible chatter.

The cold steel and white walls that surrounded me now were a far cry from the farms, the fields, and the horses who had originally drawn me toward animals and eventually into veterinary medicine. Sometimes as veterinarians go through life we realize that what drew us to help is lost, that our dream of curing animals has become clouded over -- not by dark influences, but by a toughness that develops over time. I had gone through vet school and had been a practicing dog and cat emergency vet for five years when it finally dawned on me: I was not on the right path.

Late that night, on duty at the ER, I slept on a hard dusty futon crammed into the bathroom to shut out the sting of the bright fluorescent lights. I dreamed about living in England more than ten years earlier, when I'd first thought of becoming a veterinarian; I remembered those months spent in horse boot camp fondly, even though the sagging mattresses had been no more comfortable than this one.

Many memories have stuck with me from the nearly two years I spent in England training to be a horseback riding instructor. White sheep speckled the green rolling hills surrounding the cobblestone and brick horse stable where I trained. Since I have been around horses all my life, I can't smell horse manure but I sure remember the piercing smell of sheep dung every morning. I recall the purple face of my stern and stout instructor, Carole, as she shouted orders. Most of all, I remember Fiona Wainwright's bright red hair bobbing against the deep green of the beautiful fields of western Dorset. Our trails had been trodden upon for hundreds of years and Fiona and I would ride along hedgerows and stone fences whenever we could sneak away from our busy barnyard schedule. Fiona was a fellow British Horse Society student instructor who did not share my fear of jumping.

My memory of my first day at the Dorset School of Equitation is one I'll always treasure, the way one fondly remembers things that, at the time, were definitely no fun -- like losing baby teeth. I remember Carole pulling my body into a new position she thought would improve my jumping. I was standing in the middle of the arena on a nice ex-event horse named Sam, who seemed thoroughly bored with the whole heated conversation. "No, not like that!" Carole grabbed my riding pants to scoot my bottom back the way the British jump. "Bring your hips back over the saddle. You bloody Americans jump too far forward." I noticed, as the other girls would later concur, how Carole's purple lips bulged and her posture grew more rigid the more aggravated she became. I wasn't sure if it was my new riding position or my nervousness, but as I approached the three-and-a-half-foot jump, in slow motion, the earth became the sky and I tumbled off the horse, hitting the ground with a loud thud.

In that moment, as I sat stunned in the dirt, I heard a voice, maybe an old riding instructor or maybe my mother from years ago, tell me, "Donna, falling is something you are good at. People learn a lot from falling." It was true. As I fell, instead of clenching to fight the fall, my body had instinctively relaxed, as if I were bareback on my cousin's farm again arguing a no-win battle with the old barnyard pony Flicka, who fortunately was short enough that the falls were less painful. It was a simple argument: she wanted to go to the barn and I wanted to go riding into the field. She would buck and swerve and buck and eventually lie down until she had pinned my seven-year-old body to the ground. Round over: Pony wins again. But my mother would coach me, into the twilight, from on top of a tattered toolshed overlooking the barnyard. Comforted by the summer night sparkle of blinking fireflies, through tears and turmoil she would make sure, at least, that I got back on, no matter what.

My mother's coaching taught me to search for my own truth. While growing up, I listened to her discuss her work as an international studies professor. We had visitors from other countries who ate, spoke, and treated their medical ailments differently than we did. I learned that the conventional American way was not necessarily the best way -- that we all see the world through only our own narrow window of experience. Many years later, when I found myself in my first year of veterinary school with formaldehyde-induced nosebleeds from spending so much time with preserved dog cadavers for anatomy class, I called my mother for advice.

One time my mother and I went hiking, near vet school in eastern Washington, with my little black dog. I had rescued Smudge, but her emotional turmoil had scarred her to the point of submissive urination. Veterinarians always seem to own abnormal animals with complicated histories. "How can my classmates kill normal pound dogs, bought for fifty dollars, supposedly just to learn surgery?" I asked my mother. We were at the top of Kamiak Butte, overlooking the treeless rolling hills of the Palouse. She had no answer, and I guess I couldn't have expected one. I would have felt better about taking those lives if I'd believed that what students learned made up for it in some way. But I didn't feel sure of that. I decided to take alternative surgery, in which we performed procedures on dead animals euthanized for terminal illnesses. Headed by Dr. Karl White, the veterinary chool at Washington State University was known for its progressive non-kill surgery classes, and for that I was thankful. Otherwise I would not have made it through veterinary school.

During one of my most difficult nights at vet school, I was on rotation with Teresa, now a racetrack vet, who was always tougher than I was, more the way I thought an equine vet should be. We were walking a young former racehorse to prevent him from getting colic, a life-threatening stomachache horses experience because they can't vomit. Walking colicky horses helps keep their digestive tracts moving, and can even save their lives! The horse had probably come from a second-rate racetrack. It was obvious that he had had an awful life. As part of a research project on how drugs affect intestinal motility, one of our vet school teachers had done an experimental surgery on the horse. The sickly horse had hardly been an ideal surgery candidate; thin and crawling with lice, he had been acquired by the vet school via a horse trader.

Now, every time we students stopped walking him, he would attempt to lie down and roll on or kick at his stomach. We switched off who walked him, as we had been told to do, and between us, we kept him moving and medicated all night. I turned to see his face in the moonlight. His body was coated with sweat, and his terror-filled eyes showed their white outlines bright against his dark body. His legs were riddled with scars, knobs, and bumps, evidence of life on the track. Even though he would rather have lain down, he followed each of us obediently, as thoroughbreds have been bred to do.

When Teresa walked the horse, she did not complain; with each step, she seemed more complacent, more resigned to the fact that it didn't matter what she thought, anyway. I screamed at her from over the fence, "This sucks! He should have known not to cut this one," and numerous other colorful complaints lent to me by my fiery Irish heritage, a habit that hadn't won me any brownie points with the powers that govern a veterinary college.

But I knew that people like Teresa fit in well at the racetrack. All these years I'd looked up to her because she was a hard scientist, so interesting and tough. Through vet school, her freezer was filled with roadkill to be studied and dissected. Her shelves were decorated with skeletons of snakes, possums, and raccoons. I loved her like a sister, but as I watched her calmly lead the pained horse by his tattered rope, I knew that my veterinary career would need to move in a more compassionate direction.

I wondered if there was a safer way to treat animals through the veterinary curriculum. Discussions about "iatrogenic" (doctor-induced) disease worried me. Why should we be the cause of any disease? These questions festered within my consciousness, but when I looked around, most of the other students didn't seem to share my concerns. They might have been more concerned with the next exam.

I knew from my years with horses that sticking with it through difficult times would be worthwhile. In vet school, I felt as if I were falling off a horse again. Eventually, I thought, if I dusted myself off enough times, like with Sam in England and Flicka in the old barnyard in New York, I would be pleased with my endurance. I believed that when I graduated and began working as a veterinarian in the real world, I would love my job. But that night on ER I felt like I was still falling.

At 1:00 A.M. we got the call most ER vets have come to dread. Tanya came to tell me, "A breeder is on the phone. She says her boxer is straining but can't have her puppies. She's on her way in." Nervous twinges began churning in my stomach as I checked to make sure all the surgical equipment needed for a C-section was sterilized and ready to go.

Tanya warned me after she left the exam room that this was going to be a difficult breeder. When I entered the room, I saw the boxer bitch on the floor, pushing, with no results. "She needs a C-section, just like last year," the breeder ordered.

"How old is she?" I asked, resenting being pushed into anything, since it's my veterinary license on the line.

"Seven, and been bred every year of her life. I've made thousands of dollars from her puppies. I would have gone to my regular vet, but he's out of town," she said in a snippy tone, as if she were trying to annoy me.

"Well, because of her history, I hate to rush right into surgery," I said. "I'd like to take a radiograph and try an oxytocin injection first."

"I guess, but it's a waste of time. How many C-sections have you done? You couldn't be more than twenty-five years old." She leaned forward, staring right at me. Although there are responsible breeders, they never seemed to come in on my shift. I questioned the idea of breeding dogs when less high-strung, more unusual, and healthier mixed-breed dogs are euthanized every day in animal shelters.

"I've done quite a few, and I look young for my age." I hoped she would lay off. "If you want to go to another emergency clinic, by all means, we can refer you somewhere." An extended silence accompanied the building tension between us. Only the quiet hum of the fluorescent light above us filled the exam room. She sighed, resolved to let me handle things, and went home.

Unlike her owner, Madeline was very forgiving and kind-tempered. She groaned and tried to push a puppy out every few minutes, turning nervously to see if she had been successful. I took her over to the X-ray table. Tanya and I laughed a little, despite our unspoken stress, while we took her radiograph. "Well, at least she's nicer than that bulldog we had last week," Tanya said. Unlike boxers, by and large bulldogs can't give birth without C-sections.

"Yeah, but this breeder is a real gem," I said as we turned Madeline on her back for another view. My cynical East Coast side always became more pronounced in the middle of the night.

The radiographs showed that Madeline had six large puppies, and the one in the birth canal was positioned sideways. After putting some exam gloves on, I tried to turn the puppy around, while Madeline strained against my fingers. It was no use. I couldn't even feel the puppy; my fingers were too short. Oxytocin w...

Edition details

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0743223020
• ISBN 13: 9780743223027
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 279